


Friendly Fire

by GoodGuyJean



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe, F/M, Gamer AU - Freeform, and pizza, bad pizza, jeankasa - Freeform, some drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 08:41:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13210101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoodGuyJean/pseuds/GoodGuyJean
Summary: Jean Kirstein is trying to get ahead in the competitive gaming industry and he thinks Mikasa Ackerman (his beautiful and talented workplace crush) should be trying to get ahead too. But something is holding her back, and Jean just can't keep his thoughts to himself anymore . . .





	Friendly Fire

**Author's Note:**

> This is a gift for the wonderful [Imperfecteclipse](http://imperfecteclipse.tumblr.com/)!

“We’re live in 3 . . . 2 . . .”

Jean grunted in pain as Connie sharply elbowed him in the ribs. He glanced over. The shorter man was smiling hugely, his raised eyebrows indicating that Jean should do the same. Jean gave the barest shake of the head. People were always telling him that his grins were more terrifying than his more customary resting bitch face. It would do more harm than good for him to appear falsely chipper.

“1!” Marco gave a thumbs up from behind the camera.

“Welcome back to GamesSurveyCorps’ live coverage of Siiiiiina Con!” Connie announced in his best showman voice. “I’m here with Jean,” Jean tried to keep his face straight when Connie pronounced his name _John_ , “And Eren and Mikasa,” Connie pointed across Jean to two people on his left. Like Jean, Eren had opted out of grinning for the camera, preferring a fierce scowl. His sister Mikasa also refused to smile, but her expression was more neutral. _And beautiful_. Jean shook his head when he caught himself staring. _Again_. He prayed the color rising to his cheeks didn’t show up so much on the camera.

It was no secret that the channel’s views and ratings had gone up after Mikasa had joined the team, and that it probably had as much to do with Mikasa’s clear dark eyes and long eyelashes as it did with her very impressive gaming skills. Although Jean considered himself something of a cynic about human nature, the number of comments from dudebros about how “hot” Mikasa was were starting to irk him; shouldn’t they take her more seriously as a gamer? Wasn’t that what she was here for? But he didn’t think he was the one who should say these things; it would feel hypocritical considering how often his own mind wandered to Mikasa’s beautiful black hair. _But still. Mikasa’s the strongest gamer of any of us._

“Today we’re going to be testing a new multiplayer game for Xbox, _Titan Attack_ ,” Connie started on the spiel. “We’ve chosen to do local co-op in teams of two, but there are bigger multiplayer servers as well.” He glanced over at Jean as the signal for him to pick up the rest of the speech.

Feeling contrary after looking over at Eren’s grouchy face, Jean attempted a more cheerful expression. His cheeks hurt with the effort, so it probably looked fake. He could already see the comments: _smh jons face is so CREEPY LMAO_. He should really learn to be more presentable or else he was never going to make it off of this dinky little channel. “The object of this map is to clear the city of titans—who are kind of like zombie giants, I guess?” Connie gave him the rehearsed nod. “We have five minutes to do it, or we lose the town. The tricky thing is that we’re also competing to see who can kill the highest number of titans.”

Eren’s wiry eyebrows knitted together even more furiously. “I’m going to kill them all! Every. Last. One.” His intense green eyes bored into the camera on that line. As usual, Jean had no idea if Eren’s rage was part of his act or not. Three months of working with the guy and Jean still couldn’t get a proper read on him. Unlike Mikasa, who was pretty much universally beloved by GamesSurveyCorp’s base, opinion on Eren was divided. Some people loved his enthusiasm, but others found his yelling obnoxious. Personally, Jean couldn’t stand him.

“Shall we?” he asked Connie through gritted teeth.

It was a simple enough set up. Third person, overpowered steampunk weapons for the demo, a few character-specific special abilities, and a team kill counter in the top right hand corner of the screen. They played on two TVs with split screens for their teams. With Mikasa on the other team, Jean didn’t have any real hopes of winning, but there was a petty part of him that wished he could track how many kills he and Eren got as individuals. Jean was sure he could wipe the floor with his colleague. Eren was passionate but lacked technical finesse at games, something Jean thought he himself had in spades.

As expected, Mikasa cleaned up the most titans and it was primarily a battle for making sure that he and Connie got a respectable number of kills for second place. Privately Jean felt it wasn’t fair that Eren and Mikasa were always a team and therefore Eren always got carried through games by her, but he tried to let that go and concentrate on looking like an adequate enough player for the stream. Eren, of course, played like a maniac, going after titans and power ups without much thought to coordination or strategy. Not that Jean and Connie’s teamwork was perfect, but at least they were communicating—Eren barreled through the level and Mikasa saved his skin without him noticing.

 _He probably thinks he hasn’t died yet because he’s great at this._ A muscle twitched in Jean’s jaw.

Near the end of the timed co-op, Eren ran for a power up in the center of the map, Mikasa tailing him and picking off the titans along the way. Jean and Connie were circling a spawn point in a corner of the city map, trying to pad their numbers by killing titans as they appeared. It was a bit cheeky, but everything felt like fair play when it came to keeping up with Mikasa. They had just downed another titan when Eren whooped and Jean glanced over at the other screen.

Everything had turned red on Mikasa and Eren’s TV. Lightning exploded and suddenly Jean wondered if this game came with a seizure warning. When the event stopped, Eren’s character had transformed into a titan himself.

“That’s an option?” Connie blurted.

“Hell yeah! Let’s kill the titans—hey!”

Eren’s controller was buzzing. His thumbs frantically smashed the buttons, but the titan on the screen seemed to be moving with a mind of its own. “What the fuck? I can’t control it!” He glanced at Mikasa in exaggerated horror.

Her lovely face still characteristically serene, Mikasa’s hands stilled on her controller. “I’m dead. I’ll respawn in thirty seconds.”

There were twenty-five seconds left in the game.

“Shit,” was all Eren manage.

The game ended with Jean and Connie edging out Mikasa and Eren by two points. Eren’s titan form did some damage, but it couldn’t be as precise as Jean and Connie, and once the ten second power wore off he died immediately. Jean felt like he should be celebrating—beating Mikasa at a game, wow! and the sheepish look on Eren’s face should’ve been enough to keep him in gloating material for weeks—but instead a familiar irritation was itching under his skin.

_Why does she stay with him? Why does she let him hold her back?_

* * *

 

At the dark and slightly dingy hotel bar, Jean nursed a whisky neat. It was his second one of the evening, but he was drinking slowly. He knew he should be socializing more, giving his card to executives and other gaming channels, but after a day at the convention center he found he wanted to avoid people for a bit. Mull over his options.

Of course, he’d been mulling over his options for over a year now.

Jean knew he wasn’t a competitive gamer by any means, nor the most charming personality on camera, but he had a lot of inside knowledge about the industry and the technology. Working for the up-and-coming indie YouTube channel GamesSurveyCorps was certainly keeping his foot in the door, and he generally liked the work, but it wasn’t bringing in enough money to pay the bills all on its own. He figured if he worked steadily and made enough contacts he could eventually upgrade to an officially licensed channel like the Military Police, a First-Person Shooter centric channel sponsored by Xbox. With a lot of work, he could probably climb his way up into the job he wanted.

Mikasa though, she had something special. Talent. Genius. Whatever you wanted to call it. She was a pro-gamer in the making, Jean had seen her tournament rankings . . . from when she actually bothered to play in tournaments. But she didn’t seem to care—or maybe she did, but she didn’t want to leave her brother Eren behind. Jean just couldn’t fathom it. There was no other reason she should be on a small channel like GSC, not when any of the bigger channels would be happy to have her as their face.

_And what a face, eh?_

Jean had tried to reason with himself over the past few months: clearly, Mikasa being on this channel was helping it gain more of a following. If it was the only one that would accept a greater risk like the more divisive and less skilled Eren along with her, what did he care? Surely by boosting the channel Mikasa was boosting Jean up into the big leagues as well? And hey, what was so bad about having such a beautiful person around the office? Connie and Sasha teased Jean relentlessly whenever they caught him staring at her (which was more often than he liked to admit). He tried to avoid indulging his crush on her too much—clearly she was out of his league in more ways than one—but it definitely got him more interested in coming to work and succeeding at it. It was her own decision to be here, so he should be grateful . . . and yet he wasn’t.

He just hated to see talent wasted.

Jean took another sip of his drink. _But it’s really none of my business._

Another half hour slid by. Jean fiddled with his phone, trolling through photos of the con on Twitter and Instagram, vaguely starting to form a game plan for networking tomorrow in the back of his mind. Or he could go to the big con dance tonight, see who he ran into there. _You don’t network at a dance, Jean . . . but why shouldn’t you do something that’s not networking?_ Mikasa’s face floated into his mind, but he pushed that thought away. Even if she was at the dance, he was unlikely to run into her . . . and dancing with a colleague was messy (if she agreed, which, considering she acknowledged his presence the minimal amount required to do their job, was unlikely. . .).

“Seriously, I saw you at PAX East. You’re amazing!”

“It’s not so hard once you learn the game.” Jean’s heart sped up at the sound of Mikasa’s level voice from somewhere close behind him. It was amazing how it carried without her seeming to raise her volume at all. He slowly set down his glass and willed himself to not turn around.

“Don’t be so modest! You wiped the floor with Braun, and he was everyone’s person to beat last year. So let’s be real,” the speaker dropped his voice to a whisper. “What do you think it would take to get you to move out on your own? A sponsorship to do more tournaments? Your own channel?”

“I’m not interested in moving.” Mikasa didn’t miss a beat. She said it with absolute conviction and zero thought. Jean’s stomach lurched. The itch under his skin started again.

Her tempter wheedled and coaxed, but Mikasa stubbornly dug in her heels and refused to budge. Eventually the recruiter was forced to give in with a sigh and a muted, “Well, you have my card if you change your mind.” Only after the clicking of his heels faded away did Jean dare to turn and look at Mikasa.

She was sitting in a booth a little ways behind him, her dark head bowed over a little card and a half-finished pizza sitting in front of her. With an air of finality she dropped the card on the table and started to slip back into her (sexy) red leather jacket, obviously getting ready to leave. The itch under his skin intensified—she wasn’t even going to take the card, to pretend like she was considering an offer than so many others in the business would have jumped at. After hesitating just a moment, Jean left a cash tip on the bar for the bartender and slipped into the booth across from Mikasa just as she was standing up to go.

“Mind if I finish your pizza?” he asked, then winced at himself. _What kind of opening is that? Too late to stop now._ “Don’t want to waste food.” He forced himself to look her in the eyes even though his ears were on fire and his voice cracked just a little bit. _Shit._ He smiled to try to cover up his nervousness and then realized this was probably the biggest mistake he had made so far this evening. _Fucking shit._

Mikasa never looked surprised, only mildly startled. She nodded. “Sure. I was just leaving.”

“It’s cool, I’ll see you tomorrow.” He picked up a slice of the pizza to give himself something to do with his hands. A lackluster concoction of cheese on bread if ever he saw one.

He took a deep breath before continuing, “And the day after that, and the day after that.”

“Yes.” Mikasa’s eyebrows creased into the slightest of frowns.

 _Shit, what are you doing Jean?!_ But the anger was coming back now, and it was pushing these words out of his mouth before the more rational side of his mind could stop them. “Because you won’t leave, Mikasa. Even though you could. You could go anywhere.” He knew he sounded a bit aggressive, knew this probably wasn’t the best way to get through to her, but the floodgates were open now. “Why are you letting him ruin your career?”

She stiffened. “He’s not.” She stuck out her chin, not even asking who he was talking about. “We lost a casual game. He was trying to help. And he did help. It was just friendly fire.”

“It’s not just this one little mistake, Mikasa. It’s a pattern.” He hastily took a large bite of the pizza to prevent himself from going further into what _exactly_ he thought of Eren’s behavior.

“You don’t understand.” Her eyes narrowed into a glare that almost had him choking, but he managed to maintain his composure. Somewhat.

“Maybe I don’t,” he managed through a mouthful of pizza. “Maybe he’s worth it, I’m not sure. But we’re all watching him, waiting for him to prove it.”

Mikasa sidled out of the booth and turned her back on him. “I’m leaving.” His stomach sunk right through the floor.

“See you tomorrow,” Jean repeated to her retreating back, even as his righteous anger began to dwindle at the realization that he had completely ruined his already meagre relationship with Mikasa. They had barely spoken since she’d joined the channel, and _this_ . . . attack? It was the first real conversation he had chosen to have with her.

 _Smooth_.

* * *

 

Inside Jean’s head, he flung insults at himself. _Invasive_. _Prying. Condescending._

“Shit.”

Jean was stumbling in the hallway to his room, sometime after midnight. The bad whisky (he’d ordered another glass, for fuck’s sake) and mediocre hotel pizza were churning unpleasantly in his stomach. He’d eaten what was left over from Mikasa’s meeting, three whole slices. After the elevator ride up here, he’d probably be need the bathroom very shortly.

Outside his door he took a moment to lean his head on the cool metal frame. Then he heard the faintest of footsteps behind him, and glanced over to see who it was.

“Ah, shit.”

She was at her own door, just three rooms down, deftly inserting the plastic hotel key card into the lock.

“Mikasa,” he called, unthinking.

There was no acknowledgment of his presence. Probably what he deserved after butting in. He sighed. “He’s your brother and he’s not such a terrible gamer and it’s your own damn business . . . and I’m sorry.”

The slightest pause, and then she was turning her door handle.

“You know what’s best for you. I’ll stay out of it.” He turned back to his own door then, fishing around in his jean pockets for the key. He had pulled it out and was about shuffle off to his own bed to sleep off his embarrassment, when:

“Jean.”

When his head whipped round, she looked him directly in the eye. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

And then . . . his heart stopped. Was that . . . did her mouth just . . . quirk? Upwards? He couldn't confirm it because she was ducking into her room, her face obscured by a curtain of her beautiful black hair. And then she was gone.

“Y-yeah. Yeah you will.”

**Author's Note:**

> Happy holidays Justine! Here is a Jeankasa gift for you! I'm sorry I got blocked up and it took me a while to write -_-. I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> I enjoyed exploring this ship, although I think I could have made it a bit more explicitly romantic and because it's Jean's POV it's a bit unfair to Eren . . . . In the sequel to this that's in mind, Jean and Mikasa get closer over time (maybe close enough to go out to coffee . . . and then drinks . . .hmmmmmm *waggles eyebrows*) and then Jean gradually makes his peace with Eren--and they come to a better understanding of one another! I didn't want to get too far into it in this piece, I worried it would distract a bit from the core story . . . but maybe I'll mend the rift between Eren and Jean at a later date!
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all enjoy! Happy holidays everyone, let me know what you think! :)
> 
> Special thanks to Mirandafandomette for reading through this a couple times and helping me get the characters right!


End file.
